Conventionally, as a technology controlling the engine of a vehicle, known is a vehicle having an idle stop mechanism that automatically stops the engine during halts such as waiting at traffic lights, and automatically restarts the engine upon driver's start operations. Further, as another technology controlling the engine of a vehicle, known is a technology that controls the engine of a vehicle based on the signal provided by another system.
As the latter technology, e.g., Patent Document 1 discloses a running controller in which an ETC apparatus is mounted on a vehicle and the speed of the vehicle when the vehicle passes an ETC gate is controlled to prevent the running control from being performed against a driver's will, thus causing the vehicle to smoothly run. In the running controller, an ECU (Electronic Control Unit), when the vehicle approaches up to a predetermined approach distance or shorter (on the order of 500 m, e.g.) to an ETC gate detecting a vehicle passage and automatically collecting the toll, notifies the occupant of the vehicle that the ETC gate is present ahead. When the driver of the vehicle turns an ETC passage switch to the ON position to input the driver's intention to pass the ETC gate, the ECU starts ETC passing control and starts the acceleration/deceleration control of the vehicle such that the running speed of the vehicle detected by a vehicle speed sensor becomes a predetermined gate passing target speed of the vehicle, which is previously set (about 20 km/h, e.g.).    Patent Document 1: JP-A-2003-039976
In a vehicle having the conventional idle stop mechanism described above provided therein, a heavy current flows at the restart of an engine, thus momentarily reducing the battery voltage, sometimes the on-vehicle apparatuses thereof are reset and the restart processing thereof is executed because of the reduction in the battery voltage. When an ETC apparatus is mounted thereon as an on-vehicle apparatus, if the restart processing is executed, an authentication processing of an ETC card is carried out, and thus the vehicle stays in a state where the vehicle cannot pass the ETC gate for a few seconds. For this reason, when the driver began passing the ETC gate immediately after the restart of the engine, there occurs a problem that the ETC gate does not open. However, in the running controller disclosed in Patent Document 1, specific conditions for retrieving an ETC gate and control when a vehicle went to a state of standstill near the ETC gate due to congestion or the like are not considered. Thus the above-described problems cannot be solved.
The present invention has been made to solve the above-mentioned problems, and an object of the present invention is to provide an idle stop controller capable of excluding influences exerted upon on-vehicle apparatuses by the operations of an idle stop mechanism controlling the stop and the restart of an engine.